Chubb Lake

We got together with Kathy and organized a last minute hike for today. We met at one end of the trail on Rt 10, just past the bridge over the West Branch of the Sacandaga. Kathy had Gail with her, and Randy and I were there of course. Gail and Randy and I left our cars at this end of the trail in a nice parking area. We loaded all the gear into Kathy's car and went about 1 mile up the road to the upper trail head.

The weather was in the teens this morning so the snow was frozen hard. The sun was shining and there was very little wind. A great day for a snow shoe. We got ourselves organized and hit the trail about 10am. We headed toward Chubb lake, intending to go to the cliffs near there. Randy and I were following Kathy and Gail, who have been to this location twice. We were following an old snowshoe trail and when we got to Chubb lake, realized someone was camping in the area as there was a bit of wood smoke in the air.

Trudging along, we came to some small cliffs which Randy took a picture of. Going by them, Kathy and Gail realized they had missed the trail they wanted that went up hill toward the cliffs. Since we were very close to the trail for Balancing Rock, we went there instead of the cliffs.


We had to cross a fair sized stream on a beaver dam. A little dangerous this time of year as the snow has been melting and refreezing and you never know when a snow bridge will give way. Anyway, we were safe in all of our snow bridge crossings today.


Finally, about 11am, we reached Balancing Rock. We took a lunch break there, enjoying the sunshine and warmer weather. Temps had reached 35+ since early morning. Done with lunch and our group picture we got on our way.

Our intention was to track back to the beaver dam and cross it, then head for the cliffs. The steep hill sides, especially the south facing ones, had become slippery. The warm sun melting the snow and making it less able to hold the grip of the snow shoe cleats. I fell once and Randy took a slide too but fortuneately, no injuries.

We came close, .1 mile fromt the cliffs but since it required a 180 foot climb to get there, we decided to just push on to the cars. We had a nice hike out, hiking along beside the West Branch of the Sacandaga. Very pretty today. We got back to the cars about 1215. We'll have to go back another time to see the cliffs but we had a good day out today.